“If we do not get to do the biggest UK M&A deals during the next five years we will have failed.” Kenneth MacRitchie, London managing partner of Shearman & Sterling, April 2003.

What is a US law firm? What are its defining characteristics and strengths? And, more importantly from the view of London’s legal elite, what are the prospects that this much-discussed beast will soon be thieving UK lawyers’ lunches?